Yuval Zaliouk began making and selling cookies based on his grandmother's recipe after retiring as a conductor of the Toledo Symphony. / Almondina

by Rodney Brooks, USA TODAY , USATODAY

by Rodney Brooks, USA TODAY , USATODAY

Sitting at home through a 20-or 30-year retirement is no longer an option for an increasing number of Baby Boomers.

Some are looking to do something else because they have to for financial reasons. But, increasingly, Boomers are embarking on entirely different "encore" careers after retirement.

"The reality is people are living longer, healthier lives, and when they get to the point when the need to make a change - they retire, are laid off or sell their business - they are 60 years old, and they say 'I still have another 10, 15, or 20 or years and I want to do something,'" says Nancy Collamer, author of Second Act Careers: 50+ Ways to Profit From Your Passions During Semi-Retirement. "It's out of financial necessity is some cases, but it's lifestyle in other cases."

Take Linda Lombri, 65, and Virginia Cornue, 68, both of Montclair, N.J. In their post-retirement lives, they have re-invented themselves as mystery writers, even though neither had written fiction before. They began an e-book series, the Sandra Troux Mysteries, which is sold on 10 websites, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple iTunes. The first in the series, The Mystery of the Ming Connection, was published last year under their pseudonym, Crystal Sharpe. Their second in the series will be out this spring; the third in the fall.

Both fans of the Nancy Drew series when they were young girls, they have re-imagined her into a trio of female Baby Boomer characters. "Not only are we reinventing ourselves, we have our characters reinventing themselves as well," says Cornue.

Lombri had careers as a home economist and a marketing executive. She was forced into retirement when her job was eliminated at 62 - when she had a daughter who was a high school sophomore. "I was ready for (retirement) emotionally, but not financially," she says.

Cornue says she has already reinvented herself several times. She started out as an actor in New York City, became a director of non-profit organizations and ended up a cultural anthropologist. She still teaches part time at a local college.

Then there's David Roll, 72, who ended his career as a Washington, D.C., lawyer 10 years ago and embarked on a new one as an author, historian and founder of Lex Mundi, a non-profit agency that finds pro bono lawyers for social entrepreneurs around the world.

"I've been through the wars over the 30 years," he says. "I've been in the government litigating antitrust, working at law firms, and I managed a law firm. I decided that earlier than most people, in my early 60s, that I really wanted to do something different."

Roll's second book, The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler, was published in January. The first, which he co-wrote, was published in 2005, Louis Johnson and the Arming of America, was about Harry Truman's second secretary of defense.

But it's the non-profit legal agency, which has taken him around the world, that occupies most of his time: "I love it," he says. " It has its frustrations, because you've got to raise money to keep it going. But to have created something that is having an impact. ... Not every social entrepreneurs is changing the world, but they are some doing amazing things."

Yuval Zaliouk, 74, is co-owner of YZ Enterprises in Toledo, Ohio. He retired from a career as conductor of the Toledo Symphony in 1989 and decided he didn't want to move his family to take another conducting assignment. The answer was his dream: to make and sell cookies based on his grandmother's recipe, starting out in his kitchen.

"It literally took off," he says. "I even won entrepreneur of the year award in 2003. I never imagined that I could be a businessman."

The Almondina cookies now sell 12,000 cases a day, ship to all 50 states and can be found in supermarket chains such as Trader Joe's and Publix.

Oh, and by the way, the co-owner of the business is his wife, Susan, a former ballerina with the Royal Ballet Company in London, where they met.

"Only in America," says Zaliouk, a native of Israel. "There is a lot of mobility in this country. It's not like Europe where if you are not fired, you stick with a job for life. Here you are free to start things. It's a different atmosphere."

Marc Freedman is founder and CEO of Encore.org, a San Francisco-based organization that helps Boomers start that second career. Its focus is getting them involved in non-profit agencies.

Freedman spent 15 years working with children in low-income neighborhoods. He has long had an interest in mentoring, so he made his second career into a job that helps Baby Boomers step into their second careers.

"There are 9 million Americans who have already moved into encore careers, in education or the environment, or health or human resources," he says. Thirty-one million more gave doing so a top priority, but are struggling with the transition."

Encore offers a fellowship for people who have already retired and want to have an impact, but are not quite ready to get into the job market. The fellows work full or part time, and the fellowships last from six months to a year. Encore will have 200 fellows by the end of the year, all working for non-profit agencies, Freedman says. Companies sponsoring the fellows include Agilent, Hewlett-Packard, Goldman Sachs and Intel.

"The larger aspiration behind the organization is to tap the human capital and population moving into their 50s and 60s, and get them to help some of the challenges facing on the country," Freedman says.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) are also involved in helping retirees into encore careers, as entrepreneurs. They are jointly promoting April as Encore Entrepreneurial Mentor Month, featuring one-on-one instruction, classes, mentoring programs and help writing business plans. Information is available on both websites.

"Of 76 million people above 50 and nearing retirement, about half have interest in entrepreneurship," says Jean Setzfand, vice president of financial security at the AARP. "And many want to give back to their communities.

"We've seen an uptick in the number of older individuals interested in pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors, either as a passion or out of necessity," she says. "One is six Baby Boomers expected to go into business for themselves."

And adds Michael Chodos, SBA associate administrator for entrepreneurial development: "Entrepreneur rates are rising faster in the 45- to 60-year-old bracket than the 20- to 30-year-old bracket.

"We knew that there was great increase in interest in entrepreneurship for those over 50," he says. "When we saw the data, we were surprised to see how powerful this new movement was."

Zaliouk has advice for budding Boomer entrepreneurs: "In one word, courage," he says. It really is a question of courage, making up you mind to do something - courage, tenacity or stubbornness. Being determined to do it. In America, there is nothing that can stand in your way."